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I've been having trouble playing games with my Optical drive. It will recognize some game discs but not others. Here's the background: While I was deploying to Afghanistan, I picked up several games to help with what little down time I would have. I picked up Bioshock I, Oblivion, Lego Star Wars (all of them on one disc), Torchlight, and The Witcher. I played all of them while I was in training before deployment and during. After I returned, I spent several months (7 to be exact) job hunting. I finally decide to replay The Witcher and the optical drive wouldn't even recognize that there was a disc in the drive. Weird. I put in all of the other discs mentioned above and they all ran perfectly. I checked the disc itself, and it is a bit scratched (no more than the others as far as I'm concerned). I figured it was just lost. Fast forward to today. I purchased The Witcher 2 and my optical drive won't recognize the disc at all. I'm at a lost. Is this a simple driver update thing? I've tried updating the driver but it says its the most up to date. My machine is fully updated with HP and MS/Windows software. I tried the Witcher forums, but they only suggested I update my drivers.

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It is not uncommon for a failing optical drive to do screwy things such as reading some disks and not others. in my past experiences, replacing the drive with a $20 replacement you pick up online will save the head ache of wondering why some work and some do.

I had one that would play media disks but not read .iso boot images. I tried to work around it, playing with this or that.

You may consider cleaning the lens with an alcohol dipped Q-tip to see if it is dirty first?